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Because they (theoretically) serve a charitable educational mission with their respective schools, college athletic departments also are considered nonprofits -- a major reason the NCAA clings to the outdated, immoral concept of amateurism, and that big-time football coaches such as Texas’s Mack Brown earn $5 million-plus per season. (When you don’t pay the workforce because you’re technically not a business, all that television money has to go somewhere.) Postseason bowl games enjoy the same hands-off treatment from the IRS, with predictable results: Sugar Bowl CEO Paul Hoolahan earns $645,000 in total yearly compensation; Outback Bowl -- Outback Bowl! -- CEO Jim McVay eared $808,000 in 2009; former Fiesta Bowl CEO John Junker collected a $592,000 annual salary before the fallout from a scandal involving a $33,188 self-celebrating birthday party, a $95,000 round of golf with Jack Nicklaus and $1,200 strip club visits on the company’s (tax-deductible!) tab led to his firing.

In the book “Death to the BCS,” authors Dan Wetzel, Josh Peter and Jeff Passan report that the Sugar Bowl in fiscal year 2007 earned $34.1 million in revenue -- $3 million of that, by the way, via an unnecessary cash handout from the state of Louisiana -- while spending only $22.5 million, clearing a cool, tax-free $11.6 million and finishing the year with $37 million in assets. Not bad for a “nonprofit,” particularly one that Wetzel and company write “gave nothing” back that year -- “not a buck to the Hurricane Katrina reconstruction effort. Not a dime to a New Orleans afterschool program. Not a penny to Habitat for Humanity.”

If President Obama is serious about closing tax loopholes, Sports Welfare would be a good place to start. If Congressional Republicans truly believe that government spending needs to be reined in, they should move to slash earmark giveaways like $35,000 for the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame and $73,000 to build a miniature red-brick replica of Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Or curtail the millions in public funds given to bowl games. Or stop allowing college sports boosters and alumni an 80 percent tax write-off on athletic department “donations” that grant fans the privilege of buying season tickets. Or cut the $80 million a year the Pentagon spends on sponsoring NASCAR, cage fighting and bass fishing events. Or revisit a 1997 Congressional decision that reversed an IRS ruling and allowed corporations to keep taking tax deductions for naming rights on college athletic facilities. Indeed, if Washington’s powers-that-be want to get the nation’s financial house in order, it wouldn’t hurt to stop shoveling money at every cash-flush sports-related special interest that comes calling on Capitol Hill -- like, for instance, the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, partially made possible thanks to a staggering $1.5 billion in federal handouts.

Damn, Whiskey, I think you're my favorite poster. You always post good, by-the-numbers stuff, which I as an engineer appreciate.

Since I live in Minneapolis, I am all-too-familiar with the ridiculous goings-on involved with the Vikings corporation and their blackmail of the sports-loving populace of this state. They convinced Vikings fans (the majority) that somehow the stadium had net economic benefits by divorcing the money the stadium "earns" from the discussion of stadium costs. Next, they got Republicans to turn their back on the fiscal responsibility they like to trumpet and persuaded Democrats that education and the poor were worthy sacrifices in the name of saving the Vikings corporation an obscene amount of money, political cooperation on a scale that is rarely witnessed.

I have no NFL rooting interest anymore besides seeing former ND players do well and hoping the Vikings corporation loses every contest.

Since I live in Minneapolis, I am all-too-familiar with the ridiculous goings-on involved with the Vikings corporation and their blackmail of the sports-loving populace of this state. They convinced Vikings fans (the majority) that somehow the stadium had net economic benefits by divorcing the money the stadium "earns" from the discussion of stadium costs. Next, they got Republicans to turn their back on the fiscal responsibility they like to trumpet and persuaded Democrats that education and the poor were worthy sacrifices in the name of saving the Vikings corporation an obscene amount of money, political cooperation on a scale that is rarely witnessed.

I have no NFL rooting interest anymore besides seeing former ND players do well and hoping the Vikings corporation loses every contest.

As a fellow MiniApple resident, I agree and feel your pain. The whole episode was – and is – a shameful boondoggle. As much as I like Target Field (home of the Twins) physically, don't get me started on the bullsh¡t machinations that went into its taxpayer funding.

That "revenue" from "charitable" electronic "pull-tab" gambling is falling far below expectations pales in light of the wool pulled over the eyes of supporters of the new stadium and the state legislature. Make no mistake: the taxpayers in Minneapolis are on the hook for decades to come to enrich the owners and players.

Expensive skyboxes do not improve the quality of play one iota. Nor do they present a reasonable ROI to the taxpayers.

(Are you going to watch THE game wherever the MPLS alumni association chooses? It would be good to meet you ... since I dropped Comcast (and therefor ESPN) a couple of years ago I'll need to travel. I'll be the old-fart, Willie Nelson look-alike [as per NeuteredDoomer/Bambi] with a cane and an ND cap with "6-0 In N-O" on the back.)

Damn, Whiskey, I think you're my favorite poster. You always post good, by-the-numbers stuff, which I as an engineer appreciate.

Since I live in Minneapolis, I am all-too-familiar with the ridiculous goings-on involved with the Vikings corporation and their blackmail of the sports-loving populace of this state. They convinced Vikings fans (the majority) that somehow the stadium had net economic benefits by divorcing the money the stadium "earns" from the discussion of stadium costs. Next, they got Republicans to turn their back on the fiscal responsibility they like to trumpet and persuaded Democrats that education and the poor were worthy sacrifices in the name of saving the Vikings corporation an obscene amount of money, political cooperation on a scale that is rarely witnessed.

I have no NFL rooting interest anymore besides seeing former ND players do well and hoping the Vikings corporation loses every contest.